how I made $250 in 5 minutes

I am a meticulous bill payer. My credit score hovers around 820 and I take personal pride in never owing anyone any money. So imagine my surprise when I missed the 3PM payment window on my substantial credit card balance last month!

I was angry at myself for being careless. I don’t like to do the automated payment because I have to shift money around some times in order to pay the balance. I didn’t call the card company for a reversal because there was some sort of odd integrity in which I held myself accountable for the lapse in carefulness.

I learned my lesson and I made sure to double check my payment date in the following cycle. Imagine my horror when I got an email from Mint.com stating that I was charged a finance fee again! This can’t be right. I know I paid before the 3PM cutoff and when I checked the payment history the company seemed to agree that my payment looked good.

I was pleasantly surprised when the customer service representative (CSR) mentioned something about last month’s fee. Without any prompting she said she would look into the fees and see if she could back them both out. When the CSR returned to the line, she told me that she reversed over $250 worth of finance fees and I did not even have to ask for it.

Kudos to Chase for extending some quality customer service to a long time customer with a typically excellent payment history.

If you are a good customer you should use that to your advantage when dealing with these types of issues. By keeping me happy, Chase may have lost $250 today but they will reap rewards long into the future.